To wonder what happens to the maids and nannies etc when people flee Dubai/the Middle East

[morningmists]

I saw news stories of lots of pets being left behind, but I can't see any mention of the maids and nannies etc ? I am guessing it wouldn't always be simple to get them to England due to visas etc -so do they get booked on flights back to their homes?

My mum had a nanny growing up and she loved her as much as she loved her mum so I imagine this is a hard separation for some

There were slaves who were treated 'fairly' in the US - there was even talk about improving things for them long before it happened, and the aftermath that followed.

Jdnd seems very well informed in aspects of Dubai society that the Dubai govt would like us to be talking about.

Did you read my post? I'm in no way claiming to have had anything like the same experience as someone working as a maid.

(I'm using the term 'maid' or 'servant' because calling them 'nannies' is a total misnomer. They're maids of all work/general domestic servants, who do everything from cleaning, laundry, cooking, pet care, childcare etc etc). They're not qualified nannies or childminders any more than they are au pairs on a cultural exchange to learn the language while working specific hours for pocket money.)

Okay girl.

please stop with the “why do they need the help”

No, I'm not going to stop asking legitimate questions, especially when tbh I'm not very satisfied with the answer. The house got dusty very quickly? That's it?

I also didn't ask why women work as maids, that's obvious. I asked why a woman who doesn't work employs a maid/nanny if she views her as a threat, and what she would do all day. The answer, apparently, is "hours a day cleaning dust".

Ok.

Why are some of you shooting the messenger? @Sprawling isn't condoning how maids are viewed by some employers in Dubai, she's just reporting it. And having lived in Dubai myself I would say she's bang on!

In many African cultures it's considered immoral to not pay for help if you can afford to do so. Money is seen as something to be shared.

Well I believe pets have been abandoned willy nilly, so I wouldn't hold out much hope.
Very hard for them I would imagine.
Horrible place, built on the sweat of exploitation.
Wouldn't take a free holiday there.

There's no judgement from me in the concept of paying for help. I am minded to agree it can be job creation

Its how those workers are treated to makes a difference. And whether their employers are helping their staff get home if that's what they want to do

I highly doubt 99% of British people fleeing the middle east have had a single thought for the underpaid staff they're leaving behind.

I do agree that capitalism means that poor people look for opportunities some could think they might be better off working for pennies in Dubai than starving to death in the Philippines. That seems to be the argument for it - that it's probably better than the alternative. Which is really depressing. And I know that it's not the only problem in the world - almost everything is pretty unsettling when you really look into it; buying petrol, shopping on Amazon, etc. etc. But I think it takes a certain sort of person to deliberately participate in a personal relationship that is this unbalanced and have it literally staring you in the face every single day. It makes me really uncomfortable to think about.

So go ask a woman who employed a maid and saw her as a threat then. Doubt you will find any on here. And yes it’s extremely dusty out there and there are regular sandstorms. Think a layer of dust on everything every day. I hope that helps!

For heaven's sake, @Jdnd -- the UAE 'government' is a tribal dictatorship run by a few interrelated families only interested in the living conditions of migrants insofar as they want to present a superficially Westernised face to the world in order to continue to roll out the business model for Dubai, which, lacking oil, has had to diversity into tourism and financial services.

It does this in part by importing tens of thousands of influencers to promote Brand Dubai as safe and luxurious, rather than a country in a politically volatile spot in the ME in which peaceful protest and freedom of expression are criminalised. Hence the frequent reminders at the moment that Big Brother is watching, and that you need to stay on message. Influencers are propagandists for an authoritarian regime that likes to pretend it's not.

And bluntly, lot of laws have been introduced or modified in the UAE, with minimal attempts at enforcement. It's very easy to pass a law when a country is your personal fiefdom, and you don't have to get it through parliament. It makes you look good on paper, and you can point to it and say 'See, it's illegal to not let your housemaid have eight consecutive hours of sleep'.

As one very minor (and mildly funny) example, when I was living there, the government passed a law making breastfeeding compulsory. You had to breastfeed for two years, or you would be contravening the rights of your child to a healthy start in life, and could technically be sued or otherwise punished, including by your husband. And this is the best bit. Members of the federal council also added that for women unable to breastfeed, wet nurses would be provided.

Obviously, this completely unenforcable bit of nonsense has just sat on the statute books since, with no one working out the dirty details about who checks how a baby is fed, who determines whether a woman is really unable to breastfeed, who sources the wetnurses etc etc.

Well I was trying to, and actually I think there are quite a few people here on MN who could answer, although perhaps they don't want to.

I didn't quote anyone, but I was thinking Sprawling would probably be able to answer, she's obviously knowledgeable. Of course, if anyone else is reading who's got some insight, that would be good too.

I honestly can't see how anyone lives out there if cleaning dust is actually a full time job, 8+ hours every day? (Close the windows and use the air con? Screen doors and porches? Presumably high earners live in houses that are built to withstand this?) Doesn't it make you ill?

Still, if the issue really is that it takes the hours of a full time job to keep the dust at bay, I still don't see why you wouldn't hire someone to do that, and do the rest of the home and family stuff yourself, if you'd feel threatened otherwise. None of this makes sense.

It's clear what she meant. The husband saw fucking him (the husband) as part of her (the poster's sister's) job. It's perfectly obvious.

Not Dubai but another country in the region. I do believe that a lot of ordinary British families in these situations will look after their staff. When I was a baby we lived in a developing country in Africa. It was v expected to employ as many locals as possible so you’d have a gate guard, gardener, cook/house person, steward. I had a nanny when I was a baby, a local woman. My mum adored her. Years later when we left the country my mum paid for her children to go through college, gifted money for weddings. she is still in touch with the late nanny’s children on Facebook etc. even now occasionally a message sometimes comes, can you send me some money for xyz, and we left that country in the 80s!

@morningmistsyes employers usually pay for a ticket home

I think employing local people is different to employing people brought in for that purpose who have their passports taken from them. They certainly aren't employing citizens of Dubai.

I was born in a North African country in the 1950s because my Dad had to go there for work (not military but adjacent). My parents were a working class couple from Liverpool but were expected to employ a local to do the washing. When they came home it was back to an outside toilet and handwashing nappies herself because there was no washing machine. It wasn't a dubai lifestyle.

My information is out of date these days, as I will be the first to admit, and we never employed household help other than visits from an agency cleaner, so I'm only answering from what I saw around me when we lived there.

I would say that families with a SAHM employed live-in domestic help because it was cheap, widely available, and considered normal, to the point where not having a maid would have been like not having a fridge.

Villas are still advertised as '4-bed + maid's room'. In older houses, the maid's room was a separate little structure in the yard. In newer ones I've seen, it tends to be off the hall near the front door with its own bathroom. My point is that domestic help is so normal it's built into the architecture.

I thought it might be something like that... Just "normal", and maybe you would even be looked down on if you didn't have a maid?

But... what did they do all day? If there was a woman there doing everything a SAHM would do?

Most people I know who live in the middle east are staying put. There are something like 300k brits living in the region, i think only a small percentage are returning or have returned already.
With regarda to the nannies and maids, I don't think they have such deep bonds as your mums nanny, if they do and the family is wealthy enough they will find a way to bring them or support them. But usually they don't have these bonds
I was in a corner store in kuwait when working there a few years ago and overheard some nannies talking and they were talking about the fact their employers didnt even provide them with drinking water...as they were buying their own water and food.

Yes, I agree with that. If someone is paid fairly & there's no kafala system then it's differentm

Exactly.
Moreover, it's disturbing to think that in many cases the maid is undervalued and underpaid for the crucial role of childrearing.

If someone's taking care of your kids, wouldn't you at least have a selfish interest in keeping them happy so they treat your child well?

I see, interesting.

I think Dubai is a different case though. Other countries don't have the same kafala system, for one

The US State Department currently ranks the UAE as Tier 2, indicating it does not fully meet the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking but is making "significant efforts" to do so.

This is the State Department's independent assessment. Ireland is also tier 2.

I'm not going to say it's all hunky dory and perfect, but improvements are being made. My family there treat the maids well, pay them fairly and don't hide their passports.

Well in Dubai the point is that not much money is shared with the maids a they're often very poorly paid...

Of course some are treated well.